Plucking Flowers
by Delgodess
Summary: In which Petunia is born with magic. On the outside, it changes very little. A Fiction written in short snippets. Eventual Pet/Sev.
1. Chapter 1

**Plucking Flowers**

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 **Summary:** In which Petunia is born with magic. On the outside, it changes very little.

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 **Disclaimer:** I don't own _Harry Potter_.

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 **One:** Violet

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 _The petunia flower symbolizes anger and resentment, especially when they are presented by someone with whom you have recently had a heated disagreement. They can also symbolize your desire to spend time with someone because you find their company soothing and peaceful. According to some sources, petunias are also a symbol of not losing hope._

* * *

Petunia watched as Lily eagerly opens the letter, eyes just as blank and grey as their color. Their parents crowd closer, beaming in anticipation. Lily's gasp nearly makes the plain, blond-haired girl flinch, but it goes unnoticed as her sister continues to read aloud, eager voice rising as she goes on. And when Mr. Evans asks to hear it again, Lily is happy to oblige, their mother leaning over the polished dining room table to pat a red-haired head. As for Petunia, sat upon the uncomfortable surface of a rigid, hard-back chair, well… she had stopped listening after the first sentence. She knew what it said, after all. And she knew what it meant.

* * *

 _There was no flash of light. No sound. The prickling feeling of needles beneath her skin did not abate. Air whooshed in and out of her lungs, but she couldn't feel it. Her throat was raw from screaming, her eyes stinging from begged sobs. She saw red. Red pain, red horror, and the red of her sons' blood._

 _When sound returned, she wished it away with the fervor of one about to die._

 _Hoarse laughter, jeering masks. And a question. Always a question._

" _Where is the boy?" The creature asks._

 _She doesn't answer. How can she, when she can't possibly know?_

" _SCREAM LITTLE PIGGY!" The loud mockery of a pigs' squeals. A whimper in a voice as familiar as her own heartbeat, though it raced so disconcertingly with in her heaving chest. She couldn't see, but in the far corner of this wretched room smelling of copper and filth, her husband's body lay, dead._

 _But_ this _, this is_ fear _, fear the likes of which she never felt in_ his _presence, even when words of spite and anger where thrown, the snobbish pleasure of his flinch._

Freak _. A bitter realization._

 _In her desperation, she finds it within herself to pity him. Fate was not kind, to match him against a monster. Then all thoughts of the boy vanish as starlight bursts beneath what were once her eyelids, scarlet red, sickly green and, oddly enough, cool, soothing violet._

 _When she wakes, the world is far from the comforting lap of the everyday ordinary._

* * *

Petunia Evans is a quiet child. Demure, like a good little lady. She minds her manners, minds her parents, and minds her betters. Never fusses or complains. Yes, she is a perfectly normal child. Ordinary, even.

And if that quietness becomes a bit unnerving at times, well. It's just a phase. She'll grow out of it.

And if her dull blue eyes seem to quicken and spark at odd intervals, or her behavior seems skittish in the face of loud sounds and bright, sudden colors, what is it anyway? She has an average, Arian appearance, but of course, that isn't mentioned in polite company, especially not in times like these.

Petunia Evans is a quiet child.

Withdrawn. Stubborn. Vindictive.

 _Things_ happen when she is around.

Petunia Evans is a quiet child.

Perhaps that is why the Evans decided to have another.


	2. Chapter 2

Petunia is six years old when magic sparks from her fingertips and the tiny wooden doll she is playing with fly's from her hand to plunge face-first into the nursery wall.

Horror doesn't begin to describe what she feels.

For the next two weeks, she exists in a near comatose state, body functioning, but mind elsewhere. It gives her parents quite the scare, but in those days, one didn't simply call for a doctor willy-nilly. She is fortunate then, to come out of her reverie when she did, though the speed of her acceptance is strange, even to her.

Her parents' whispers of a madhouse die down after that, but she's not all that sure if _this_ is any better.

The purple light that slides and leaps upon the surface of her skin brings back an old longing, a hurt bitterness, a festering wound reopened. She remembers. And it is not pretty.

It is hard to be told you aren't anything special; harder still to believe that those discouraging voices may be wrong.

So she waits.

She waits as years go by, watching as her mother and father dote on her younger sibling, the tiny, red-haired child like a breath of fresh air after their first born. Part of her resents this, but the greater part, still ruined by horrid experiences, is terribly tired. One lifetime of bitterness and hate was more than enough. It's exhausting to continue in such a manner.

So she feels nothing. She holds silent, apathetic to the strangeness that has so rudely become her life.

Meanwhile, Lily blossoms. She is a clever, bright girl, all joy and laughter. The stubbornness that so characterizes her later youth appears in the dimples of her eyes and dip of her chin. Flowers unfold in her presence and twinkling lights appear in her darkened bedroom.

Her older sisters' gifts manifest in less…benign ways. Doors slam closed when rare moments of irritation pierce her indifferent facade, metal spoons melt in her hands when she grips them too tightly, and bed curtains burst into flames at a wayward touch. All the instances of _magic_ -ah, how her mind shies from that dreaded word- are tactile and vivid in a way that is at once alarming, and subtle.

Hers is a quiet magic, close to her skin, hidden like a hand of cards held near to her chest. She is not comfortable with this _thing_ , so often referred to with such wonder. But her once fear is missing, a result of her fervent denial of reality, no doubt.

Lily has no concept of this. Her pureness is unjaded, her love freely given.

And she does _love_ Petunia.

This is something that Petunia cannot avoid, no matter the long blank stares, the unsettling quiet, the _things_ that happen. Lily persists in her love, and Petunia- poor uninteresting, un-special Petunia- cannot help herself.

She loves back.

It is a distant thing, a flicker of warmth behind cool, grey eyes, but if Petunia is a creature of ice, than Lily is all fire and brave passion. So warm. So protective. So _loving_. Years pass, and with their passing comes a spark within the pale girl's mind. Something nudges, quietly, persistently, fiercely.

A question.

Always a question.

 _What if…?_

Slowly, patiently, it chips away at her apathy, until suddenly her mind is awhirl with thoughts, ideas, _plans_. She is confused, but not surprised, when a letter never comes for her. She resists writing to the old man, too used to disappointment to bother with the let down. When a familiar- but not quite- face comes trailing after her sister and into her life, well. Many people are drawn to the flame and Lily's' shines bright.

The boy is, oddly enough, exactly as she remembers him. Scrawny, lank-haired and reserved. She wonders what her sister sees in him, with his black, darting eyes and pinched, solemn features. She ignores the way his cautious habits strike a familiar chord, just as she ignores his sometimes haunted gaze. Indeed, she ignores _him_ , out of some kind of misguided principle, no doubt, a remnant from a time when her pretentious vices were much more obvious.

But _he_ does not ignore _her_.

He watches, from the corner of his eye. He can't help it, she thinks. It worries her, the wary attentiveness, but there really isn't much she can do. Soon, they will be sent away, and she can begin her real work.

It is only normal that she keep occupied, after all.


	3. Chapter 3

The bricks side shut behind them as the Evans' trail hesitantly after the stern-faced professor, each gasp of awe tinged with bewilderment. Diagon Alley is bustling with people; noise, color and wonder pouring out of the shops and onto the cobbled streets. Mr. and Mrs. Evans clutch their children close, instinctively trying to shield them from the unknown, even as their mouths gape and their eyes wander. Lily has none of it, tugging this way and that, pulling with a wide grin towards anything and everything that catches her eye.

When their guide speaks, prim, cultured voice explaining their surrounding with just the barest hint of amused warmth, the girl listens with an intensity typical of her audacious nature. Her parents nod carefully, clearly lost.

Her sister is nowhere to be found.

The goblin bank held no wonder for her, not in its oddity, nor the Shoppe's, with their brightly changing signs advertising sales and goods alike.

Instead, she drifts.

She lets the magic hum uncomfortably over her skin, stewing on bitter thoughts and half remembered shadows. She sees the decay behind the shining lights, in dark streets and twisted buildings just one corner turn away. She flinches from the abnormal screeches of the pet shops, ducks from a queer window displaying a velvet cushion supporting a plain, short length of lacquered wood, and stumbles back the way she came when a tall, pug-faced man nearly runs her into an inconveniently placed wall. Her lips purse as she steadies herself, patting at her plain dress, and fidgeting at her scratchy collar. Somehow, Petunia finds herself at familiar marble steps, the dull white of them glaring into her eyes just as the midday sun glares overhead.

So she sits, leaning on her knobby knees and gazing disparagingly at everything she never had. Part of her fights the irrationality of this place, -perfectly aware of every perfectly freakish aspect- but another, newer, part of her takes it all in with a keenness not unlike her younger sister, if a bit colder.

Her attention drifts towards that unturned corner, all dark edges and shadowed eves. The girl thinks it strange that the entrance to such an obviously foreboding place is _right there_ , smack dab in the middle of everything. When compared with the loudness of its surroundings, it seems almost… _normal_. Mundane. Common. An unassuming lie.

It is not bravery that makes her stand; nor courage that prompts her thin legs to carry her across the busy thoroughfare. Such things are impractical in the face of fear and experience.

Curiosity beckons her forward, ambition silences her doubt, and shrewd determination discards the rest.

Smoky darkness envelops her like a cold hand, and she shivers, even as her Mary Jane's continue to click against the cobbles. She goes deeper, unhesitating in her commitment to find _something_ with in this foreign space.

Cloaked and hidden personages pass her by, shifty characters stop their hushed conversations, and glinting, cat-like eyes peer from shrouded doorways. She continues still, though a distant voice with in her mind screams that this is _indecent_ , that she is a _housewife_ , an _upstanding woman_ , _a thirteen-year-old girl who is untouched byanythingbutgreengreenlight_ -

The girl turns left with unfaltering steps and ducks her blond head into a grungy shop entrance two doors down.

The door shuts behind her gangly frame, a little bell ringing despondently overhead. It is dark and cool here, and Petunia squints her once-dull eyes, the blue of her irises brightened by adrenaline. Shelves cover the dank space, filled to the brim with bottles and boxes. The air tastes tangy, the smell unpleasant with things she cannot name. Strange pants hang in tied clumps from the ceiling, dry and withered.

Moving from where she had stopped is no easy task, not when her limbs shake and her breath hisses quickly from between her teeth. But move she does, jaw clenched and eyes searching beyond the chipped, black countertop of the reception for any signs of life. No one comes to greet her, no one calls out, and yet…she can hear humming. Soft and deep and just beyond a cracked door behind the counter.

The girl hesitates, weighing options, blinking though plans. But the sound comes again and violet sparks across her wringing fingers, as if to shock her into action. Slipping around the uncluttered island, Petunia peers carefully though the lit crack of the partially open door, squinting against the light.

A man moves in the lamplight, nether old nor young; simply grey. He hums over a boiling cauldron, blue steam rising from the simmering liquid. Beakers and vials line a cornered workbench, strange apparatus spinning and wheezing. A silver knife lays ready for use nearby, a wooden stool pushed out of the way.

Long fingered hands reach for something from the table, the man twirling a long stick, -a _wand_ , she reminds herself- and Petunia leans forward in anticipation, straining to _see_. The weight of her shoulder shifts and she bumps wood, causing the door to swing open with a loud creak.

The humming stops.

Petunia freezes, caught and unable to breathe.

"You're late." The man gripes, rasping voice carrying despite his turned back. She opens her mouth to correct him, but stops when he carries on.

"Dice the willow root. And I do mean _dice_. Morgana knows how often you apprentices confuse the two."

Petunia swallows to speak, but is interrupted, once again, before she can start.

"Quick, you fool! Before the potion ruins!" He barks, attention intent on the strange concoction.

Suddenly feeling cowed, the slight girl rushes over to the stool and, dragging it to the workbench, proceeds to search frantically for said root. Luckily, ingredients seemed to be carefully laid out in a neat row before hand, probably in preparation for solitary work.

And work she does.

The man orders her to squeeze, grind, and split all sorts of unknown substances, and for the next hour and a half, Petunia hurries to do as she's told, handing off the finished product to many an impatiently waiting hand. His wrist curves and slides through the air with each gesture of his wand, harsh voice rising and falling with each mumbled and indecipherable word. Petunia is not stupid enough not to understand how dangerous it is for her to be doing this.

She doesn't even know what half of these things _are_ , let alone what they _do_. But every time she moves to stop, to run out of the shop and never look back, violet sparks across her hands and trails up her arms, stirring up goose bumps and making the tiny hairs on her skin stand on end. No. Leaving now would be a bad idea, no matter the reprimands she would receive later.

She sighed. Her parents were going to be such a chore when she finally got back to them.

Finished with the last ingredient on the table, Petunia sat stiffly on the old wooden stool, brushing a bead of sweat from her brow with a wrist and watching as the man stirred once, twice, then three times before, with a _poof!_ The liquid turned a deep yellow and the man stepped back.

She was examining her tired and sore hands when he finally turned to her, trying to hide a wince as she awaited judgment.

"A bit young for an apprentice, aren't you?"

She raised her head, looking from one yellow eye to the next, then down to the blue-veined paleness of his skin. His hair was more silvery than grey now that she was really looking, long and tied back from a face almost too smooth to be natural. Her mouth opened and then closed silently. Her already pounding heart rate skyrocketed. She swallowed. Her eyes kept flicking away and back to his slightly amused face, before dipping to his chest. Whatever he was…

He wasn't human.

She slipped off her seat, ready to run for the door.

"I'm sorry, I just-"

"You did well. For a novice."

She paused, startled. He was turned away from her again, leaving her to stare incredulously at his robed back as he carefully began storing the still useable ingredients. His wand flicked casually towards her former work area, cleaning and rearranging and vanishing. Even the stool slid into place under the table.

"Yes, a bit young…" He hummed to himself.

Petunia shifts on the balls of her feet, nervously inching towards the door. She doesn't say anything, because clearly, she misjudged the situation and she needs to leave. _Now_.

The blond-haired girl is almost through the threshold of the shop before he speaks again, rugged voice drifting from the back of the gloomy store.

"But should you be interested...you need only ask."

The melancholy ring of a bell is her only reply.

Out in the sunlight, surrounded by noise and bright advertisements and worried, scolding parents, Petunia ponders. She calculates and contrives and schemes a scheme to come back at a later date, when her sister stops fussing and the old straitlaced witch is occupied with other little boys and girls, rather that the oddity that is becoming herself.

Her parents she can handle.

It's the magic ones she's got to worry about.


	4. Chapter 4

Days later and her hands are swollen, green and riddled with strange orange-colored lumps.

She hides them as best she can, but her hands are the only useful tool she has at the moment and, before long, her parents take notice. As her mother rushes her to the kitchen, flinging her appendages under the warm water of the sinks tap, and crying out anxiously to her father, who has just sat down to read the evening paper, Petunia can't help but be a tad bit annoyed.

So, looking them both in the eye in turn, she very clearly and very firmly states that she is fine. To her astonishment, it works. Their eyes glaze for the tiniest of moments and, suddenly, things are back to the dull, cozy normalcy that is an evening with the Evens'. Her sister, seated on one of the wretched, hard-backed chairs of their dining room table, can't seem to close her gaping mouth.

"How did you _do_ that?" She whispers urgently in the quiet of their shared bedroom, turning beneath her covers to stare at a blond head. Petunia stares back, and with a fierce hiss, changes what _might_ have been, to what _will_ _be_.

" _I_ _didn't_ do _anything!_ "

Lily's green eyes glaze. Then blink.

"Goodnight, Petunia."

"Night, Lily."

* * *

She stands at the top of the hill leading to the park, watching Lily and Severus play. His tentativeness is no match for her little sister's enthusiasm, and so, before long, they are tumbling down the hill, giggling in frightfully loud voices. She longs to join them, but melancholy prevents her. It doesn't help that her hands feel numb and prickling in turn, pinching sharply at any jolting movement.

So she stands at the top of the hill, lingering by the roadway and waiting for the time to call them in. Dark clouds hang gently over head, littering light afternoon showers with lazy efficiency. The sparseness of the water hardly bothers her, nor the children below, and so Petunia thinks on her future in the rain.

Summer is ending, and unless said otherwise, she will go back the dreadful school across town, where she will learn to sew and cook and become a perfectly acceptable part of society.

As she should, a weak, nagging voice within her mutters, but the thought leaves her dissatisfied. She needs to go _back_ , and, glancing down at her rotting hands, she needs to go back _now_. Worry gnaws at her as she lifts her curled fingers, trying to move them with little success. Slowly, and with no little pain, Petunia is able to lift a single finger: a thumb.

What happens, happens within one blink and the next. There is a trolley before her, a bus really, and the doors slide open with a hiss of displaced air. An odd man sits at the wheel, and odder still, a shrunken head invites her in.

"Welcome to the Knight Bus, little la-dy! Where's 't be?"

Petunia has never been more mortified in her life.

Or more intrigued.

"Diagon Alley?" She ventures, breathless with a queer kind of desperation.

"That'll be six sickles, then. Nine if you be want'n beverages an te' special accomm-o-da-tions!"

Petunia reaches with trembling fingers into a dress pocket, pulling out her parents money meant for ice cream, should the vendor show. She glanced down at her sister, still distracted by her quiet friend, and licks her lips. Lily would be disappointed.

"I've only got half a pound." She pauses. "Do you… do you take muggle money?"

The head seems to eye her shrewdly for a moment, before breaking out into a pleasantly eerie smile.

"It'll do! Now, on'way? O' roun' trip?"

Petunia deliberates, but ultimately chooses, "Round trip, please."

And with that, the money fly's from her hand, disappearing into a strange box that slams shut and locks itself with a padlock seemingly too heavy to fit its frame.

"O'l aboard!" The head shouts, and for a moment, the girl hesitates.

Then she steps forward, plucking the two tickets that appear from a slit on top of the box and clutching them to her chest, the glass doors swishing closed behind her.

* * *

Petunia makes her way back to Knockturn Alley in the pouring rain, drenched and chilled to the bone. What might have been a warm summer's drizzle back home is autumn's cold deluge in London. She can barely make out the shop's sign as she rounds that second corner, _Pebble's Apothecary- Tonics, Potions and Ingredients_ , shimmering in the faded light.

The bell rings and the door slams, leaving her wincing, wide-eyed and wet in the entry way.

The man with silver hair looks up from where he had been leaning over a large logbook, hands resting on the black counter. The frown he levels at her is not encouraging.

Petunia shivers, tucking her swollen hands to herself in an effort to keep her remaining ticket dry, and struggling to preserve what little warmth she can. His yellow eyes narrow at the movement, flashing.

Then he's _there_ , in front of her, tugging her arms down and apart, waving and muttering.

The girl gasps to find herself suddenly dry, fumbling to catch her falling ticket, even as heat builds on her skin in an unsuccessful effort to penetrate it.

"…foolish…ridiculous…" The man, Mr. Pebble, grumbles under his breath, flicking his wand. The ticket zooms into her now dry front pocket and before she knows it the man is pulling her around the spotless island and into the back room. The stool floats quickly towards them and he sets her down on it, turning to rummage through one of the two large cabinets lining the back wall.

For her part, Petunia just sits, still dazed by her audacity. She'd made it. She didn't think she'd get though the pub wall, but the bricks had _moved_ at the slightest touch-

"Drink this." A harsh voice interrupts her frazzled thoughts, a lithe hand pushing an ember-colored potion to her mouth. She pulls away, wary, but the scowling visage of the pale-eyed man is enough to stopper any arguments. The girl drinks and warmth spreads like a beacon from her center, slipping like hot chocolate into her bones.

"I-"

"Quiet."

She complies, wavering as he grabs her wrists and extends her arms. Her hands tremble, greenish-yellow and bleeding.

Petunia is watching his face keenly and so sees the black of his pupils dilate. Her heart pounds in her ears, fear licks at her-

-but he just scowls harder, releasing her with an audible curse.

"Damn it all, girl! Have you never heard of dragonskin gloves?!" He barks, rushing back to the cabinet.

"No." She whispers, but somehow he hears, back stiffening as he stills. But he brushes it off with a movement that reminds her of Lily brushing back a particularly stubborn lock hair, and then moves to settle next to her with an assortment of bandages, paste, and an airborne trail potions. They float into place as he rests her hands on the counter before him, wand flickering out and whirling lazy trails of green and gold into her skin.

Petunia sighs as the spells take effect, slumping uncomfortably onto her elbows in relief. She hadn't realized how much it hurt until the ache was gone.

The air fills with his raspy mutterings as time carries on, each potion drank and every paste and salve applied until, at last, the bandages are wrapped and tied.

"So, then." Mr. Pebble starts, flicking his wand at the messy table and sinking into a comfortable-looking chair that just so happened to appear the moment he went to sit down.

His fingers meet, his legs cross, and a silvery brow rises. Petunia gulps.

"What's a muggle doing, _twice_ , in Knockturn Alley?"


End file.
